Professor Colin Harvey:

I welcome the fact that we have the Bill and the Referendum Commission, although I am conscious of the glacial pace of change. The Convention on the Constitution vote in favour of voting extension was in 2013 and it is now 2019. I do, in a sense, commend the Government on taking this step but I encourage it to take the next one. We need a date for the referendum and a commitment to taking this forward. It is also welcome that there is an indication that the Government is committed to the more inclusive option on this as well. We need to move to the next step on that now.

The theme for my next answers is Brexit. Ireland is co-guarantor of the agreement and the co-guarantors have responsibilities. We all know that Brexit has severely damaged relationships that will need to be rebuilt because the agreement will not work without robust British-Irish co-operation underpinning it. That co-operation has been damaged by Brexit. The Irish Government has a strong role in advancing many of the issues I have raised today in the context of those conversations. Although we have mentioned the Executive, there is also the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. The latter needs a reboot. It needs to become a much more robust institution than it is at present. It could be a vital forum in the future in the context of the matters we are discussing now.

The bill of rights rests with the British Government. It is absolutely clear in the agreement that this should have been done by means of Westminster legislation but that has not happened. There is an obligation on the British Government to take this forward. It has proposals and there is a need to advance this debate. It joins a list of issues which I am going to link together in answering the question on the Executive posed by Deputy Brendan Smith. The difficulty is that the issues I have identified are causing the problems that we see in the institutions. There is a sense in the work that I have done and continue to do with civil society organisations and others that, by 2016, people had had enough of the rights and equality commitments of the agreement not being delivered. If we are able to address some of the things we have talked about here today, then there will be political institutions that can function on a sustainable basis in the longer term. Without the underpinning human rights and equality that was anticipated in the agreement, there is a rights and equality crisis in Northern Ireland that really needs to be addressed.

It is not just about getting institutions up and running, it is also about institutions getting up and running on the right basis in order that they do not collapse again after 12 months.

We need to address some of the rights and equality challenges. Essentially the withdrawal agreement and the protocol were entirely predictable given the British Government's negotiating positions and red lines, and the agreed objectives on a hard border, the agreement and North-South co-operation. The protocol that has emerged was entirely legally predictable and has undergone a number of variations. It has been transformed from a backstop that was essentially temporary unless and until a more permanent arrangement was in place.

We need to be clear that we are in this position because of the British Government's approach to these negotiations. I do not need to tell this committee that the North does not want to leave the European Union. It voted to remain and that has been confirmed. As the softer versions of Brexit for the UK as a whole have been largely ruled out by the British Government, in order to protect the things that were agreed in the joint report of December 2017 we were always going to need a legally operable special arrangement. Nobody involved in the negotiations and nobody following those negotiations closely should be surprised that is where we have eventually end up.

I underline the point that the majority of people in Northern Ireland do not want to be in this conversation at all; they do not want to leave the EU. However, in the event of leaving, the protocol is a rather predictable legal measure that has been transformed. It reflects the need for special arrangements to do the things that people wanted to do based on the red lines the British Government has had throughout the entire process. Ultimately, it is an exercise in legally limiting damage to protect some of the things we are discussing right now.

No diminution has found a place in the protocol. It is interesting that the protocol refers to the need for no diminution in issues of rights and equality. I realise that there is much highly politicised comment on that protocol at the moment. I underline the point that the special arrangement that has emerged in that protocol was an entirely predictable outcome of the shared negotiating objectives and the red lines the British Government set down for the discussions.